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SOVEREIGNTY AND NATURAL RIGHTS 515
legislature or judicature. Subsequent
critics have found
difficulty in believing that Rousseau meant what he said;
difficulty, that is to say, in crediting the fact that he really
envisaged Sovereignty as belonging to the assembly of the
whole people. But when it is borne in mind that Rousseau
was thinking of a community not larger than a Greek
City State,
more than
a community, that is
100,000 adult citizens
to say, in which not
at most were entitled
to vote, there is nothing particularly outrageous about
his view. It does, however, give rise to a problem which
becomes acute, so soon as we are concerned with a com-
munity larger than the Greek City State. If we take the
view that it is with the people as a whole, or at any rate
with the majority of the people, that power in a com-
munity resides, or ought to reside, how, it may be asked,
is this power to be exercised or made effective in the
modern v nation-state, \vhere the majority of the people are
too numerous to form a practicable legislative body?
Political Proposals of Bentham. This is one of the
problems with which Jeremy Bentham concerns himself
in his Fragment on Government. Bentham followed Locke
in holding that the majority in a community should
decide. To him it seemed self-evident that what the majority
wanted would be, if not "right" a word which, as we
have seen, had no unique meaning for Bentham 1 at least
conducive to the general happiness. But, more plainly
than Locke, Bentham discerned the problem which, in a
large community, the demand for representative government
presented. For in a large community the majority
must, it is obvious, express its wishes through representa-
tives. These would in accordance with Bentham's psychological
views, 1 be guided by self-interest, albeit enlightened
self-interest. How, then, were they to be induced
to act in such a way as to carry out the wishes of the
majority, that is to say, to promote the greatest happiness
of the greatest number?
1 See Chapter IX, pp. 395-327.
' See Chapter IX, pp. 398, 329^